Lou's View

Friday, June 20, 2014

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LAST CHANCE AT NORMAL is the true story of my descent into the
underworld of Los Angeles, journeying among drug lords and gang members
as I attempt to ’save’ my heroin addict husband. Among the proliferation
of addiction memoirs, what makes the story unusual is the juxtaposition
of our two worlds: he was an illegal Mexican career-addict, I was a
naïve, Cambridge-educated Brit who had volunteered at a Skid Row
homeless shelter in a bid to find meaning in my life, which my job in
the movie industry and an engagement to a wealthy British industrialist
did not provide.

When I met Francisco he was in recovery and the poster-boy for the
Mission, appearing on radio and regularly reducing people to tears at
Christian meetings. After a speedy marriage (spurred on as much by
everyone’s opposition as anything else), my romantic notions were
quickly dispelled when six weeks after the wedding I discovered his
stash of needles.

What followed was a wild rollercoaster ride, struggling to keep up
with Francisco’s lies, his piteous appeals for help, brushes with the
Law and the landlord, not to mention sundry episodes of kidnapping and
unwanted attention from Sinaloan drug lords. All this, while holding
down a job as an HIV outreach worker. Daily, I interacted with
gang-members, pimps, prostitutes and junkies in the parks and motels of
the barrio… and then came home to more of the same. Just when I finally
decided to abandon my husband, I discovered I was pregnant.

The book begins with the birth of my son (who has never known his
father) and works backwards. This was a partly an experiment with
dramatic form, but also a necessary device to get back into the head of
my younger self – someone who now appears impossibly credulous and
idealistic.

LAST CHANCE AT NORMAL is a story of faith and despair, of exorcisms
and drug deals, of sex-workers who became my friends and chaplains who
became my enemies, but most of all, it is a story that tries to
chronicle with compassion and humor my own precipitous decline and
subsequent resurgence, as well as the lives of those who will never
escape the cheap motels and streets of the barrio.